DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Winter 2024 Class Schedule

Schedule subject to change

*Starred courses required of all majors

Winter Quarter 2024 Course Descriptions:

ANTHRO 101-8-1: First Year Writing Seminar: Protest Cultures

The past decade has been called the worldwide “Decade of Protests.” Protesting has become a key way that everyday people articulate political demands. This course will examine how we got here to this time of protests, and analyze current protest cultures in the US and around the world. It focuses on how protests start and build power, how they sustain themselves, and what effects they have, do not have, or cannot have. We will ground our inquiry in careful attention to the demographics of protests, how protests use space, the relationship between protests and social media, and the popular culture of protests—including chants, signs, music, fashion. Ultimately, we will ask the question: what are protests good for?"

ANTHRO 101-8-2: First Year Writing Seminar: Queer Worldbuilding

Traditional ways of representing the world around us are steeped in heteronormative assumptions and practices. How might we re-imagine or represent the world around us in a queer way? What would a queer utopia look like and how could we begin to move toward that future? We will explore what makes a queer space "queer" and why these spaces are so elusive and poorly represented within traditional maps. We will examine queer mapping projects from scholars, artists, and activists around the world who have re-envisioned what a map can depict—erasing borders, marking queer communities or imagining new ones, and disrupting heteronormativity to actively re-invent queer worlds. Students will also read works that attempt to “queer” or creatively innovate approaches to academic writing.

ANTHRO 211-0-01: Culture and Society

Often, anthropology is talked about as the study of human culture, where it originates, how it is transmitted, how it changes. But what is "culture"? Rather than a universal, one-size-fits-all answer, anthropologists today seek to understand how ideas and actions interact within specific social contexts. Through a focus on ethnography, a fundamental method of our field, students will learn how to conduct research into the processes that shape the social world, emphasizing human agency in relation to sociohistorical, economic, political, and environmental forces. Students will learn about the history of the field of anthropology and scholarly approaches across the discipline today. A key feature will be to denaturalize social assumptions, reinterpreting what we might know from our own contexts as a starting point to understand others. Students will have the opportunity to practice anthropological research through ethnographic projects.

ANTHRO 232-0-1: Myth & Symbolism

This course is an introduction to three of the leading theories about the nature and meaning of myth: psychoanalytic, functionalist and structuralist. Each of these three approaches will be considered primarily through the writings of their respective founders: Sigmund Freud, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lectures will be primarily concerned with explaining these three theories. Examples of how these theories can be applied to the analysis of specific myths will largely be drawn from the Old Testament Book of Genesis.

ANTHRO 290-0-1 // GNDR_ST 250-0-20: Race, Gender, & Sexuality in Science & Anti-Science

Is race “real”? Do men and women have different brains? Is sexuality a choice (and should that matter)? This course examines the way these and other questions have been taken up in scientific discourse and how, in turn, scientific discourse has become a battleground in political disputes over trans rights, gender equality, and racial justice in the United States and beyond. We will approach race, gender, and sexuality as biosocial constructs, exploring their roles in debates about the relationship between biology and society, nature and culture, human similarity and difference, and knowledge and politics. Course modules will: contextualize how cultural understandings of human difference have shaped—and still impact--the development of Western science; examine contemporary scientific questions related to sex, gender, race, & sexuality, genetic diversity, medicine, technology, and the role of science in contemporary politics; explore how social inequalities can become embodied and produce biological effects; and interrogate the contemporary politicization and instrumentalization of scientific discourses related to race, gender, and sexuality, including by White supremacist, anti-trans, and anti-feminist movements.

ANTHRO 329-0-1 // HUM 329-0-20: Archaeology and Nationalism

Archaeology and nationalism have been closely intertwined at least since the idea of the nation-state emerged in Europe following the French Revolution. Archaeology offers nationalist agendas the possibility of elaborating historical records and extending the past far into prehistory. Its results can be displayed in museums and accessed online. In turn, nationalism has contributed to the development of archaeology as a modern discipline within colonial contexts and problematic theories around race. Global heritage and institutions such as UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre have reshaped the political landscape of archaeological sites while introducing new tensions around equitable access to resources and the consequences of increased tourism.

This course explores the role of archaeology in creating and elaborating national identities over the last two centuries, emphasizing the critical evaluation of historical and archaeological sources. Issues include the professionalization of archaeology; national museums and practices of display and interpretation; archaeological sites as national monuments and tourist destinations; cultural property legislation and controversies; and archaeology and monuments under totalitarian regimes.

ANTHRO 359-0-1: The Human Microbiome and Health

Did you know that all the microbes on and in your body weigh as much as your brain? And they can influence your body almost as much as your brain? They can determine how much weight you gain on a certain diet or whether you develop the symptoms of an autoimmune disease, and they can even affect your mood and behavior. Although we have long known the importance of microbes in the context of disease, recent advances in technology have opened up an entirely new field of research that is transforming perspectives on human health. In this course, we will explore the human microbiome beginning with an overview of different types of microbes and the methods we use to study them. Following that, the majority of the course will be dedicated to exploring new research on the microbes of the skin, mouth, gut, and uro-genital tract and their impacts on human health. We will also consider the influence of geography, politics, social structures, and culture on global patterns in the human microbiome and health.

ANTHRO 378-0-1: Law & Culture

This seminar examines the anthropology of law as the intersection of law, culture, and language. Through theoretical and ethnographic texts and films, the course considers legal institutions, beliefs, and practices as important sites for the creation, negotiation, and reformulation of social and cultural norms and practices. We consider the ways in which culture and language shape law, and the ways in which law conditions and constrains culture and language. Our attention remains on individual actors interacting with legal systems and principles and people's expectations of the law. We examine in cross-cultural perspective such matters as evidence, persuasion, performance, human rights discourses, legal pluralism, globalization, and gender. Throughout, questions of power, agency, and inequality (especially around gender and race/ethnicity) animate our investigations.

ANTHRO 386-0-20: Methods in Human Biology Research

Biological anthropologists endeavor to understand the global range of human biological variation, and human biologists in particular are interested in investigating the effects of culture and ecology on human adaptation, development and health. The course will provide an overview of the logic and method underlying empirical research in human biology. The course will introduce students to the scientific method, as well as the process of research design, data analysis and interpretation. The course emphasizes hands-on laboratory experience with a range of methods for assessing human nutritional status, physical activity, growth, cardiovascular health, endocrine activity and immune function. In contrast to clinical or biomedical approaches to human biology, biological anthropologists tend to study a diverse range of individuals in everyday settings. Therefore, an emphasis will be placed on minimally-invasive research methods that can be applied across a range of cultural and ecological contexts.

ANTHRO 390-0-1: Cities and Nuclear Weapons

The risk of nuclear war is increasing, from North Korea’s nuclear program to Russia’s threat to use tactical nuclear weapons in its war with Ukraine. The nuclear arms race is also gaining momentum, as evidenced by China’s growing nuclear arsenal and the U.S. “nuclear modernization” program. Cities have always been considered targets for nuclear attack. This advanced course in the anthropology of peace examines the role of cities—city leaders and city residents—in the politics of nuclear weapons through the lens of a broader vision of security in which global nuclear security is inextricably linked to local, national, and regional concerns such as racism, gender inequality, economic inequality, environmental crisis, and memories of past violence. The course introduces students to the history of the development of nuclear weapons, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, various bilateral and multilateral frameworks for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament, key concepts, theories, and policy tools related to nuclear security, and the evolution of anti-nuclear activism, particularly from the “nuclear freeze” movement of the 1980s to the current global campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. The course will also offer opportunities to hear from a wide range of guest speakers, including defense and security experts, atomic bomb survivors, peace activists, and local government officials. There are no prerequisites for the course, and no prior knowledge of anthropology or security studies is required. Students from all majors and schools are welcome.

ANTHRO 390-0-2 // ASIAN_AM 392-0-1: Advanced Topics in South Asian American Cultures

This class offers an in-depth examination of South Asian Americans in the United States. We will delve deeply into topics of race/ethnicity, language, gender/ sexuality, caste, class, and migration, with comparative examples drawn from the UK and Canada. Case studies will be drawn from anthropology, Asian American studies, literary fiction, memoir. We will additionally watch and analyze various relevant film, television, and social media, with a focus on global flows of South Asian culture.

ANTHRO 390-0-3 / 490-0-27 // MENA 390-3-1 / 490-0-1: Sexing the Middle East - Gender and Sexuality in the Making of a Region

Are gender and sexuality useful categories of analysis in contemporary Middle East? What sexual assumptions underpin studies of the Middle East? And what kind of a Middle East grounds gender and sexuality studies in the region? This course engages with queer studies and critical race and feminist scholarship in anthropology, history, and sociology to probe these questions. In this course, we will attend to the formation of “gender” and “sexuality” as categories of sociocultural analysis, surveying the major shifts within the intellectual history of gender and sexuality studies, while interrogating the ways in which race, class, and nationality complicate studies of gender and sexuality and of mobility alike. In other words, if one major question that animates the course is what intersectional studies of mobility have to contribute to historical and anthropological studies of gender and sexuality in the Middle East, the other is what kind of new analytical ground studies of gender and sexuality could open up in sociocultural analysis of mobility, migration and transnationalism across the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

ANTHRO 390-0-4: Advanced Methods in Forensic Anthropology

This course provides a review of advanced methods employed within the practice of forensic anthropology – an applied subfield of biological anthropology. Forensic anthropology focuses an appreciation of skeletal biology on questions of medicolegal significance, for example in estimating aspects of identity and assisting in trauma assessment. In this course we will discuss the full range of issues associated with human skeletal identification from trauma analysis to the identification of individuals in mass disasters. These problems will serve as a model for understanding the broader aspects of applied anthropology. This class will include discussion of relevant literature in forensic anthropology and hands-on, dry lab activity to better appreciate the reality of practitioners in the field.

ANTHRO 390-0-5: Oral History

This course introduces students to understanding world events through individual experiences and will provide them with methodological training to conduct life history interviews, transcribe recordings, analyze the narratives in them, and craft readable life histories targeted to a generalist audience. The Oral History approach values the experiences and understandings of everyday people, placing them not only in their immediate lives but also in the fabric of broader social processes, moving beyond statistics, policy, and normative expectations of how individuals in certain gendered, racial, class, or political categories experience the world. Students learn about the uses, circulations, and repositories of oral histories, and how the oral history tool can enrich their own research and post-university work skills. Drawing on linguistic anthropological insights into narrative as co-constructed in everyday life, students will learn to identify narratives and stories in everyday interactions. Students will conduct an oral history project that links to an event familiar to the wider public: the Covid-19 pandemic, experiences of confinement, or distance learning; the rise of authoritarian and polarizing politics; the expansion or elimination of women's reproductive rights; climate change / extreme weather events (fires, floods, heat, drought); or another topic of choice that merges the intimate and the global. No previous research experience is necessary. Class meetings will include mini-lectures, group discussion, small group workshopping, and collaborative refining of interviewing skills. Required reading materials will be provided.

ANTHRO 398-0-20: Senior Seminar

This course is for all anthropology majors writing a senior thesis and will provide students with a forum for writing their thesis. It is an opportunity for you to analyze findings/data from your original research on a topic of your choice within anthropology and to draft a paper based on that research. A range of issues will be considered, including research and writing styles characteristic of all four subfields, clarifying research and writing goals, preparing a critical literature review, data analysis and presentation and, most importantly, writing processes. Students will be expected to make brief presentations about the development of their paper throughout the quarter. The goal for this class is to produce a 20-page paper minimum that describes your research questions/issues/problems and presents an analysis using material from field research, laboratory work, data sets or library research; this will serve as the basis for the thesis you submit to the Anthropology Department in early spring quarter.

ANTHRO 401-1-1: Logic of Inquiry in Anthropology (Bio)

This course will provide an overview of key theories and concepts in biological anthropology. Specific attention will be given to how biological anthropology articulates with the other sub-disciplines of anthropology. General principles from evolutionary biology will first be discussed, examining how they can be applied to look at human biological and behavioral variation. Alternative approaches for explaining human variation are then critically examined and considered within a historical context. Third, we will examine the material (i.e., fossil) evidence for human evolution, focusing on the interplay between biological and cultural/behavioral evolutionary trends. Finally, we will examine how several aspects of modern human variation (e.g., growth, nutritional status, physiology, health) are shaped by the interplay between genetic, physiological, ecological and socio-cultural factors. Throughout the course we will highlight the utility of the bio-cultural framework for explaining human biological diversity and variation in health and well-being."

ANTHRO 484-0-1: Contemporary Linguistic and Semiotic Anthropology

This course covers a range of linguistic anthropology and semiotic anthropology topics, including narrative, affect, materiality, indexicality, qualia, performativity, citationality, scale, interdiscursivity, chronotopes, enregisterment, and others. The course is intended to broaden and deepen students’ understanding of linguistic and semiotic anthropology in ways that directly support the development of their doctoral research. Graduate students outside of Anthropology are encouraged to contact instructor with their interest for a permission number.

ANTHRO 490-0-22: Current Topics in Human Biology: DNA and Society

This seminar will survey current trends in the study of DNA within the social sciences, with a focus on leading edge questions, debates and controversies. We will read current book length treatments of topics, along with shorter pieces that provide complementary or conflicting perspectives. The line up of books and topics will be finalized as a class, but will likely include (but not be limited to) recent work that uses ancient DNA to reconstruct the past migrations and relatedness of human populations, the use of DNA as a tool to reconnect with ancestral African populations in the African diaspora, current controversies around the relevance of genetics to health inequality and social mobility, and emerging debates around the ethical and societal implications of gene editing (CRISPR) technology. We will lay a foundation for engagement with these literatures through critical readings of historical antecedents to these fields.

ANTHRO 490-0-26: Global Life of Things

This class examines how ‘things’, including commodities, precious objects and ordinary goods connected worlds and shaped the everyday life of people. The course is structured between theoretical framings of global goods that consider scale, context, and materiality and the practical considerations of tracing objects through human networks of exchange, commerce, colonialism and consumption. As such methods addressed in this class include object histories, compositional analysis, and commodity chain analysis. By focusing on material exchanges through the archaeological record, this class provides a venue to explore three interrelated questions: what systems of the world objects carry within them, how do these objects shape human circuits of commerce and trade; how objects mediate between global economic forces and the fluid identities of individuals as they are drawn into global circuits.

ANTHRO 490-0-28 // RELIGION 468-0-28: Textual Ethnography

 This seminar explores theoretical and methodological links between textual and ethnographic research. As an interdisciplinary and topic-motivated field, religious studies pursues research questions that can cross multiple disciplines and periods. This seminar takes up one of those crossings—text and ethnography—as a site of rich potential for methodological innovation and theoretical exchange. Responding to recent calls to decenter "the human" within the (post)humanities and social sciences, we will investigate what gets lost by dividing meaning from materiality, the natural from the cultural, the archival and literary from the ethnographic. Troubling disciplinary boundaries and categorical binaries, students will be encouraged to explore what text and ethnography share as entangled sites of human and nonhuman production and what we stand to gain by linking them. What are the textual practices inscribed by our ethnographic fields and scholarly productions? How do we locate the sites in which textual projects emerge and include the bodies in which they come to live? Students will learn how to expand and deepen their own textual and ethnographic projects by incorporating research practices from both methods. Readings will be drawn from fields like anthropology, textual, literary and media studies, queer and trans studies, lived religion, science and technology studies, antiquity studies, history. The course will be of interest to students across these fields. Assignments will position students to integrate course readings and topics to their own research projects, to develop interdisciplinary research methods across time and modality, and to apply that knowledge toward research proposal development.

496-0-20: Bridging Seminar

The bridging seminar is designed as a forum to generate conversation across anthropology's four subfields. Intended for first year anthropology PhD students, the bridging seminar covers material across the subfields that relates to a specific theme or set of themes that rotates every year. Students are expected to complete readings, attend department colloquium talks, and be an active discussant. This year, we will focus on a mix of external speakers and readings on the hottest topics in linguistic, sociocultural, biological, and archaeological anthropology, including the impact of COVID-19 on anthropological research. Readings will be articles that will be made available as pdfs. There is no paper or exam for this class.

Classes will meet approximately three times each quarter, beginning in the fall.